My So-Called Millennial Life: Closing out the year

I’m not the grinchiest person I know, but one of the most satisfying days of the holiday season is the day after Christmas. It’s the day I take down the tree. It might make me slightly more giddy than putting it up. I might still be stumbling over cardboard boxes, but I certainly have the plastic bin for the ornaments ready.

This year, I had a personal elf gleefully tossing ornaments in the bin, at least as far as he could reach them on the tree. Which, that elf being toddler-sized, it’s more the adorable effort that counted.

I like to get the space back. I like to have less glitter shedding over my living room. Plus, I like closing out this chapter of the year. I survived one more Christmas season. It’s relief hearing that my alter ego named Santa has prevailed, even if I had to explain that a specific big-headed doll was unavailable and Santa had emailed me to ask if a tent shaped like a castle would do. It did.

Taking down the tree also readies me for my favorite holiday, New Year’s Eve. While I love the holiday, the time between Christmas and NYE usually leaves me pensive, stewing on the past year. Was it a good year? What does good mean? Was it successful? How do I define success?

There’s a lot of talk of the cliché fresh start that people take with the new year, but what about the sense of closure, to shut the door on a chapter — not necessarily because it was bad or good, but that it happened and you are aware of the passing of time.

It’s a mad dash from one holiday to the next, with the creep happening faster, with some friends itching to put up a pumpkin or fake blood on Oct. 1 and then toss that pumpkin in the trash faster than you can say War on Christmas after a bloated Thanksgiving walk to the dumpster.

You know what you’ll see on Jan. 2 at Walgreens, right? That’s right — Single’s Awareness Day memorabilia, or a marketing reminder for yet another thoughtful gift for your significant other, similar to the one you just wrapped badly with overpriced reindeer-themed paper.

So instead of confronting that next challenge, I’ll be sitting around on NYE and likely being quiet between drinks. I’ll be looking to recognize the time of this year instead. How I watched the baby fat start to melt out of the crevices of an elf so giddy to share in time with me by tossing ornaments. How I watched the other elf ask me exactly what elves wear and realize how life with my elves is nothing but improv. (Green tights, red hat, and, uh, a starched white shirt.)

I’ll be waiting for that symbolic fresh start, too. There are so many fresh starts we can choose to take, especially if you choose to believe that all days are a fresh start.

So yes, NYE is an arbitrary demarcation, a marketed cultural stunt. But, it’s also a line that you have a chance to draw in the sand for reflection of the past before moving into the future, as long as you can take down that past and put it into storage for a while.

Cassie McClure is a writer, wife/Mama/daughter, fan of the Oxford comma, and drinker of tequila. Some of those things relate. She can be contacted at cassiemcclure@gmail.com.